Posts tagged indie

BitSummit has been at the forefront of Japan's independent gaming scene for the past two years, hosting an event that shows off projects from small studios and industry veterans alike, plus live music and an awards show. Last year's showcase attracted 5,000 fans and 130 game developers, including ...

Not to be outdone by Nintendo's upcoming lineup of digital indie games, Microsoft has a bevy of new titles on their way to Xbox One via the ID@Xbox developer outreach program. Standouts include Shovel Knight, a retro platformer that was one of the absolute best games of 2014; The Flame in the Floo...

Nintendo's digital store is beefing up with some top-notch independent titles in the coming months, and the company showed off a few familiar games during a presentation at GDC 2015. We're talking games headed to the Wii U eShop that have already launched on other platforms, including Klei Enterta...

Independent games are a cornerstone of Sony's PlayStation 4 messaging, and a contributing factor to the system's blockbuster success. They are not for Nintendo -- neither for the Wii U, nor the 3DS. An unsurprising strategy given the Japanese company's reliance on Mario and Zelda, its familiar, fi...

Smile for the camera -- and for the TV, and during the walk to the store, and while you're sitting in the living room, in the dark, all alone. Smile, because if you don't, they will come for you. That's the story behind the first trailer for We Happy Few, the new game from Compulsion Studios, make...

In Masquerada: Songs and Shadows, the city of Ombre resembles a fantastical, medieval Venice: elegant stone towers are lined with heavy wood furniture and the people dress in lush fabrics, wielding swords and spears. But Ombre is not Venice; it's an entirely secular society whose citizens put no s...

Finally, a game where the pricing structure is as clever as its mechanics. A Good Snowman is Hard to Build is an adorable puzzle game about a monster trying to make snowmen, from established puzzle-game designer Alan Hazelden, co-creator Benjamin Davis and composer Ryan Roth. It's charming, cute a...

It's odd to feel excited about the return of something that sounds as awful as "toejam," but here we are. The co-creator of ToeJam & Earl, a cult-hit dungeon crawler that launched on the Sega Genesis in 1991, is developing a brand new entry in the series, subtitled Back in the Groove. That's f...

Italian developers Sebastiano Morando and Francesco Lanciai didn't set out to make a game about social anxiety disorder when they created Sym. That idea spawned from the drawing of a character, a black figure with one eye disintegrating into a stark white background. Morando was inspired by this i...

A game developer, a composer and a T-shirt designer walk into a bar. Scratch that. They walk into an artist collective in Montreal, and start making weird, endearing, innovative video games together. This is KO-OP Mode.
As co-founder Saleem Dabbous puts it: "We really believe in bringing in these...

Independent games are like those weird after-hours parties held in vast, empty warehouses where anything that can happen, does. As the costs and risks of creating AAA-games such as Call of Duty, Destiny or Halo rise, more developers have stepped to the side and now attempt to build innovative, wil...

One of the indie world's first superstar developers made millions from one game. He's spent it all to make his next.
Jonathan Blow's beautiful, distinct 2008 platformer Braid is largely regarded as the original indie game -- The Notorious OIG, if you will. Blow spent roughly $200,000 to create Br...

Puppet Punch is a new game for iPhone and iPad. Originally only in the Canada, Brazil and Austria App Stores, the title is now available in the United States. The game has a clear bias against puppets. Gameplay is similar to a whack-a-mole concept, just tapping to punch the puppets. There are var...

Independent developer Michael Brough launched a PC and Mac version of his strategy game 868-HACK on Steam this week. The brightly-colored roguelike previously arrived on iOS in August 2013. In it, players "steal precious data while the world sleeps," solving mainframe-hacking puzzles in a cybersp...

This is On my iPad, a quick look at an iOS game we think you'll enjoy.
We can't seem to put down Michael Brough's Helix. Here's a brief video explaining why the retro-inspired avoidance game is special to us. The challenging, "hectic piece of momentary action" is available on iPhone and iPad f...

The developers behind City of Titans haven't been shy about praising the Unreal Engine 4 at the heart of development. A new design article gives some insight into one of the major elements of design that makes it so useful to the team, a feature that offers rapid progress between brainstorming, pro...

Ronin, a bloody action and stealth platformer from Tomasz Waclawek, is on its way to Steam for PC this year, courtesy of Devolver Digital. It's turn-based, fast-paced and deliciously violent, starring a "vengeful heroine determined to strike down five prominent figures of a powerful corporatio...

Swedish developer Guru Games announced a new first-person puzzle game this week, Magnetic: Cage Closed. Slated to launch in March for PC via Steam, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Magnetic imprisons players in a dark labyrinth with a magnet gun, solving environmental puzzles to progress through the i...

Game Oven Studios, the independent Dutch team behind body-morphing mobile games Bounden, Bam fu, Fingle and Friendstrap, will be disbanded in April, studio co-founder Adriaan de Jongh announced in a blog post today. Game Oven will release its final game, Jelly Reef, in March on iOS and Android. Gam...